For years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?

Twenty years ago, Ramaphosa was by Mandela’s side as apartheid ended and in line to become deputy president. He didn’t get the job. Now one of the richest men in Africa, he’s finally getting the chance.

On the urge to live in a house you can't afford, the "acceptable lust" of American life.

He’s spent decades dodging the law. He’s escaped from jail twice by helicopter. He’s given millions to the poor. The story of how Vassilis Paleokostas, Greece’s most wanted man, became a folk hero.

A profile of the policy wonk who shone the light and turned the tide on overseas tax havens.

Passengers get a free ride. Drivers get a passport to the HOV lane. Nobody pays, nobody talks. On “slugging,” the DIY commuter system in D.C. that’s being used by 10,000 people a day and taking thousands of cars off the road.

Who would poison the vines of La Romanée-Conti, the tiny, centuries-old vineyard that produces what most agree is Burgundy’s finest, rarest, and most expensive wine?

You get steeped in this stuff as a kid, even if some part of you was always skeptical, it's hard to lose the residual sense that everything unfolding in the world—from natural disasters to commerce and geopolitics—signals some approaching doomsday.

On the road with Billy Bob Thornton and his band The Boxmasters. Twenty years after Sling Blade all he wants to do is direct but “but none of those Hollywood assclowns will give him the keys anymore.”

He appeared out of nowhere. No name, no memory, no past. He was the only person the FBI ever listed as missing even though they knew where he was. And he couldn’t be found.

The original writer of the Village Voice story that inspired “Boys Don’t Cry” looks back on her reporting—and the huge error she still regrets.

A massive raid on a long-running cockfighting ring in Arkansas has raised complex questions about ICE, immigration, and the future of a centuries-old tradition.

The story of a marginalized, mentally ill young man who drew the FBI’s attention with his social-media posts and then staggered into its elaborately constructed snare.

Black patients were losing limbs at triple the rate of others. The doctor put up billboards in the Mississippi Delta. Amputation Prevention Institute, they read. He could save their limbs, if it wasn’t too late.

About 100 miles from Galveston, Flower Garden Banks is home to some of the healthiest coral communities in the world. Some unlikely allies came together to help expand protections, but will it be enough?

He was fired from the company he helped create, YouSendIt. Then the cyberattacks started.

A pilgrimage to J.D. Salinger’s New Hampshire home:

The silence surrounding this place is not just any silence. It is the work of a lifetime. It is the work of renunciation and determination and expensive litigation. It is a silence of self-exile, cunning, and contemplation. In its own powerful, invisible way, the silence is in itself an eloquent work of art. It is the Great Wall of Silence J.D. Salinger has built around himself.

A dispatch from Eloise Woods, a natural burial ground where bodies are consigned directly to the earth.

How corporations are using the First Amendment to destroy government regulation.

Protests against the Putin regime are already drawing over 100,000 in sub-zero weather; what will they become when spring arrives?

Are we at war? The U.S. government’s evolving response to cyber security and its impact on privacy.

How cable sports channels extort hundreds of dollars per year out of every cable subscriber for programming that less than 10% regularly watch.

As a right-wing terrorist cell went on a seven-year killing spree, did authorities look the other way?

John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.

On the shootings, and the response, in Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and Dallas this summer.